Since I started my career, I have preferred the term photojournalist rather than a
photographer. As a photojournalist, I feel that my job is to create or capture a story visually so
that it can be told. A photographer, to me, is trying to take a memorable image for others or for themselves. A long running problem and the reason I was never interested in casual
photography was that I didn’t like merely creating content, nor was I interested in making an
image for memory alone. “Tourist photography,” as I refer to it, wasn’t ideal for me because
why would I take photos that thousands of people have taken before and have been shared
already a thousand times more? I have been grappling with this feeling because I have been
slowly realizing I have an eye for visual work and enjoy creating images. Playing with lighting,
finding new angles, composing the images has been something of a challenge I have given
myself with the shots I take.

In my internship at the Register Guard, I was given a handful of suggestion by Chris
Pietsch on capturing images a different way than most. At the University of Oregon I had
professors such as Dan Morrison, Sung Park, Torsten Kjellstrand, and Dennis Dimmick providing advice on my photos and what I could do to make them more interesting and better tell stories. After a summer spent making visual stories of the BLM protests with the idea of recording the events from an objective standpoint, I was good at getting the RIGHT images, but not always making interesting images. The goal I have set for myself now is to look for ways to both tell an interesting story and make an interesting image. In essence, how do I minimize the amount of images in a story and make the most interesting and compelling images?

To tie photography from an artistic and interesting standpoint to my photojournalist,
visual storytelling, understanding of my work, I have been taking a lot more care in how I
document our trip through Ghana and my journey. I look for more angles, I play with the light, I compose an image, but I also have been trying to make each of them as interesting and informational as I possibly can. Ranging from the waterfalls and monkeys in the Volta Region to the busy streets and festivals in Accra to the haunting and heartbreaking castles of Cape Coast and Elmina, I have been trying to do the legwork to make a powerful and interesting image with a story that I can tell behind each and every one of them. I have had to shift my mindset from “getting the picture” to “what makes the picture”.